These wooden pillows are often decorated with carvings of human and animal figures. Many negroes delight in wood-carving and sometimes make strange masses of many human and animal figures crowded together in the most curious way. These they paint in bright colors. Near the west coast of Africa several tribes are ivory carvers, and their artists will cover an elephant’s tusk with human figures, animal forms, and geometrical designs; no space will be lost; every spot will be filled. [Illustration: NEGRO SMITHS AT WORK (RATZEL).] Most of the negro tribes know how to weave, and some of their cloth made from grass or vegetable fibres is closely and well woven. The most remarkable art of the negroes, however, is their working of iron. They know how to get iron from its ore and to work it into desired forms. They build a little conical smelting furnace or oven of clay, into which they put their fuel and ore. They then blow air through the fire with their rude bellows. This consists of two earthen vessels, or boxes of some sort, over the top of which bladders or skin are tied; tubes lead from these vessels and the lower end of a stick is tied to the middle of each bladder covering. The smith takes the upper ends of the sticks in his hands and works them up and down, first one and then the other. He thus forces air first into one tube and then into the other: these two tubes end in a single clay tube which conducts the air into the furnace. After the blacksmith gets his iron from the ore he works it with heat and beating to the forms wanted. At Benin City, which was at the head of a dreadful negro kingdom, they had learned how to cast bronze and made wonderful objects in it. They made rings, bells, animal figures, plaques with human figures represented on them, and masks of the human head of life size. Negroes love music and have many instruments, not only rattles, drums, whistles, flutes, and trumpets, but stringed instruments also. In some tribes there are wandering minstrels, who go from place to place playing on their three-stringed guitar and singing songs in praise of the chief or king whom they visit. They sing in his praise if he pays them well; if, however, he is stingy, their songs make bitter fun of him. These minstrels are either men or women: they are feared and disliked, but well treated, as no one wishes to gain their ill will.